Till Mr. P arrived.
I don’t know why he came here. I heard a rumor that he worked at the circus before he come here to the zoo, but Rubs Her Head, an old girl gorilla, says she remembers Mr. P as a little boy coming to the zoo when she, Rubs, was just a tiny gorilla. That could be, for Rubs is the oldest Animal in the zoo and that she-thing got a lot of respect around this place and ain’t prone to lie. She said Mr. P’s real name was Peter and back then he was a pale little something, with hair that laid on his head like yellow grass, and even as a child he knew all the postures and gestures and facial expressions of Animals even before he knew what Animal he was aping. He howled like a banshee and “urred” like a baby leopard, all in Thought Speak. “He had the Gift of Tongue,” Rubs said. Them two talk a lot. Rubs favors Smelly Ones.
Smelly Ones are Humans. I don’t know why they’re called Smelly Ones, by the way, nor do I know why we’re Higher Orders. It’s got something to do with how Animals use Thought Speak and Smelly Ones speak with their tongues going one way and their heart going another. Mr. P once ran this tale by me about a Smelly One named Adam and his wife and how they got an apple from a snake and ruined the world for Smelly Ones forever. But Irving, a boa constrictor who lives here at the zoo, he got real insulted by it.
Wherever he come from, he walked into a world of trouble when he first got here.
See, we’d been on a sort of general talk-silence that hatched out a dispute between a frog named Sniffs Meat and a girl whale that lives in over in Water World named Blows More Oil, who we calls Blows Oil for short.
I have known Blows Oil for quite a while, and Sniff too, though I got no real liking for frogs as a group. I ain’t one of them frog-eating lions. Just never liked frogs and crocodiles and water creatures much when I was free. I only ate true, live frog once in my life, when I come upon one by accident at a pond called Meeting of the Waters. I wolfed him down quick before his wife seen it. Never had no frog before then. Didn’t cotton to the taste neither. All bones, wrinkled up, no meat on him. I’ve tasted shirts that was better. But I done him a favor just the same, for he Jumped Souls, which all Animals do. When you get eaten and take the Big Nap, you come back as another Animal, usually up the food chain some. Happens to all Creatures. Well, wouldn’t you know it, not long after I sent him down my throat, I was over at Meeting of the Waters and seen a frog colored different from him but bigger, staring at me from the water and sending me a Thought Shape that said, “You wolfed me down right near my wife over on that shore there last moon.”
I said, “While I do believe I did that, I have no taste for you now.”
He said, “Good, ’cause this time I got poison skin that’ll give you a rash for eight days and nights, you fat butt-sucker.” He was a nervy little critter, sitting in that pond outta reach. He turned and jumped into deep water and threw another Thought Shape over his shoulder that said, “It worked out ’cause I got a better wife this time,” and he grabbed my own Thought Shape that told him I didn’t have no wife nor lioness the first.
So on that account, I ain’t got no more kind feelings to frogs than a dog do to a cat. But Sniff was an amusement, for he was a joker, and he and Blows Oil had been going at it for quite a while. Like most things troublesome, their dispute come out of something heard from Man.
Sniff had got wind of a story about a Smelly One named Jonas who got swallowed by a whale and lived inside the whale, eating up all the whale’s food till a gigantic Smelly One named God came down and got this Smelly Jonas out. Then the whale died.
Now I don’t know about you, but that’s the funniest thing I ever heard in my life.
Animals come and go all the time, but grub that’s already in the stomach, that’s serious. Nobody in the Higher Order, not even the tiniest fish, would ever let somebody down his gullet to snatch his grub. It don’t make no sense.
Sniff got to teasing Blows Oil pretty hard about it, and he come up with a song he called “Smelly in the Belly.” There ain’t nothing like a song to get a Higher Order going, and he started crowing it one afternoon and we all took to it and sung along together, making quite a racket:
Smelly in the Belly,
Eat drink stinky
Smelly in the Belly
Put ’em in your gut,
Smelly in the Belly
Eating out your tummy,
It’s not even funny
When your Smelly is all runny
And he can’t find your butt.
Hell, I know it’s silly, but this is a zoo. I was roaring it out myself, not thinking it was hurting nobody’s feelings, when suddenly there come a loud boom that cut the song short and throwed me right to the floor of my cage. It felt like a big rock hit me upside the head. A sudden pain rang right through my body. I rolled on the floor of my cage, bellowing like a cub. I thought I was runned through by a spear, or worse, killed by one of Man’s magic spears that go kaplooey but I didn’t feel nothing enter nor see no blood. Whatever it was, it come from inside my head. It was a Thought Shape, but bigger. Stronger. Like a clap of thunder that kept rolling.
No sooner did it quit than a second Thought Roar hit me worse than the first, and I rolled on the floor some more. That noise cut through my head something terrible, pouring over me like boiling water. I wriggled around like a cub trying to get out from under it, rolling on my back, which ain’t no small thing, for in the world of Lion where every twitch and itch says something, rolling on your back means you give up, you quit, you had enough, you’s a goner. But it didn’t stop. That racket just beat on. Meanwhile the Smelly Ones outside my cage looked on and laughed, thinking I was doing tricks to please ’em.
After a few seconds, the sound quit.
I lay on my side, dizzy. Then I felt a torrent of regular Thought Shapes come through as Animals all over the zoo started hollering in panic at once. The Bird House was in an uproar, with squawking and howling, and the free creatures, Mice, Rats, Birds, Bugs, even a few Peacocks who roamed the zoo grounds, hauled ass for the exits. Across the hall, my buddy Scratch was flat on her back in the give-up pose too, her paws in the air.
“What happened?” she said. She throwed a little Thought Shape out there. She throwed it out small, for even that bragging, dotty, bat-eating ding-dong was feeling chicken-hearted.
Then I heard Sniff the frog holler out in panic: “It’s Blows Oil! She’s going crazy in the whale tank!”
And sure enough, the noise came again and it rung my head so hard I singed my nose with my own claw and hit the deck again. It was Oil, all right, but big, like I never heard her before. Whale Thought Shapes is powerful beyond ways you can tell it. Whales is big creatures, they got a lot of room to be insulted.
I heard Rubs the gorilla cry out, “Sniff, what you done?”
Sniff tried to fix it, sending little froggy Thought Shapes saying he was sorry. Oil responded by blasting out another burst that made the first two seem like pigeon squat. I’m telling you, it weren’t no Thought Shape I ever knew of. These wasn’t no mind pictures. You could feel them things deep inside you.
Sniff tried to apologize again, and Oil sent out another mind-stabber that sliced me so deep I almost emptied my nature onto the floor and lay on my side with my back curled and paws bent. When she finally whirred it down a little, the whole zoo got to raging and cussing at Sniff.
“Sniff, you stupid, sing-song, yellow-bellied tadpole . . .”
“Sniff! Feed yourself to Oil right now. Hurry along!”
“Sniff, you’re my supper!” That was Can’t Trot, an elephant. Trot don’t even eat frogs.
The entire place was letting Sniff have it. Everyone was hollering and making a general fuss. When it died down a little, Scratch, who was across the hall lying on her back, looked at me and sent out a Thought Shape that said, “Well, Get Along, what you gonna do?”
Which figures. Only time I’m King of the Ju
ngle around here is when there’s problems.
Well, I couldn’t just lie there. Everybody heard her ask it, and I could feel their minds pointing at me. So I got up, gathered myself, and let out the biggest Thought Shape roar I could muster. I even put a little zing on it by throwing the picture of a little half-eaten whale in it, which wasn’t too good since I never seen or eaten whale to my recollection. Nor do I recall ever Jumping Souls to being whale, but I done my best. I reared back and threw it out there, then followed it up with a big, old-fashioned, open-mouthed roar, and let that whole business ring far and wide. I covered the whole zoo with them two roars, which every Animal in there knew I was entitled to do, given my position and responsibilities being that I’m King of the Jungle and so forth.
Well, no sooner had I closed my flytrap than Blows More Oil let go with a high-frequency mind-stabber that was worse than the first three all together and had every four-legged creature running around in circles eating their tails. I lay on the floor of my cage whimpering myself to a frenzy, and in fact did empty my nature to the floor that time with a pip or two. I couldn’t help it, which it don’t matter since I ain’t got to bury my own pip here nohow, but the embarrassment of the thing wasn’t too good, since I was the one that brung the added trouble.
I wasn’t the only one who lost it, by the way, for there was howling everywhere on account of the pain. I remember thinking, “This is a good day to die,” which is what every Higher Order says when troubles is coming at ’em in threes or they’re about to go belly-up on account of doing something stupid or picking the wrong Animal to munch on, or fooling with Man, whose word ain’t no good when he’s holding his magic claw that goes ka-boom. It was bad, for Oil was calling in the dogs.
That blast lasted only a minute or two thankfully, but that was enough. After that I kept my mind shut. And everyone else kept their minds shut. And we all thought only deep thoughts, which is Thought Speak of your own that nobody else can’t figure out.
And we were stuck that way for quite a while.
When we tried to talk amongst ourselves, she would blast us. When we tried to talk to her, she would blast us. I was trying to figure out a way to unsore Blows More Oil, like getting a big old grandfather Free Rat they call Born Fat, who owes me a few favors, to sneak into the frog house and give Sniff the old one-two and put him to Sleep. But the Free Creatures was long gone when Oil started up, and that included Born Fat and his whole rat family.
That’s when Mr. P came around.
The first time I saw him was at night. He always did come at night. The only time I saw him during the day was at the end, when things got crazy. But generally, Mr. P was a nighttime Smelly, not like the rest.
He was standing outside Scratch’s cage, wearing the green skins with flaps on it that Smelly Ones who work at the zoo wear all the time. He was a little Smelly and old by zookeeper standards, with an extra pair of glass over his eyes that the Smellies use to help them see. He sidled up to the railing outside Scratch’s cage, climbed over the railing, stuck his face between the cage bars—which is a hell of a thing to do if that black panther’s in a bad mood—and said, “Hello there.”
Scratch looked back at him, then looked at me, then back at him.
“Hello there.” Mr. P said it again. A Thought Shape. Clear as day. Didn’t say a word of Human Speak. Just thoughts.
Scratch blinked a few times.
And then Mr. P says, “How are you today?”
I swear on my life this happened, and if I’m lying you can set my tail on fire and stretch it around my shoulders. It was the first time I’d ever heard a Smelly One Thought Speak. I couldn’t believe it, so I stood on my hind legs and leaned on the cage bars to look. I wasn’t even thinking how sore my legs was from being in that position.
He had a kind of Thought Shape voice I’d never heard before. Not like an Animal. It felt light and windy. The shapes he made was jumbly and coarse, like a little cub would make. He stood there with his head between the bars of Scratch’s cage, smiling and showing his teeth and Animal Speaking. It was a hell of a thing to see for the first time, a Smelly One talking without moving his jaws, showing his teeth as he threw baby Thought Speak around, crude as it was.
Scratch stared at him frozen, just blinking.
I could feel everybody listening in real close.
“Don’t be afraid,” Mr. P says to Scratch. “Can you Thought Speak?”
Well, I could see Scratch was in a predicament right off. If she Thought Spoke, Blows More Oil might send out a charge that would knock out everybody’s teeth. On the other hand, nobody had never spoken to a Smelly One before, and it was a hell of a thing.
So what Scratch did, she nodded.
Mr. P picked right up on it. He said, in a real kind way, “No need to be shy. I’m Mr. P. I just got here. What’s your name?”
Scratch stared at him a minute, then wiped a paw across her face and looked away. That panther can be a cool son of a bitch when she wants to be.
Mr. P looked at her and sighed. “So terrible,” he said. “I’ve heard of Higher Orders who have been in zoos so long they’ve forgotten Thought Speak. I didn’t think they were real. But . . . it seems so quiet around here . . .” He looked at Scratch in a sad way and said, “It’s a shame. And you’re such a handsome, beautiful creature.”
Scratch, that vain devil, she smiled.
Mr. P laughed. “C’mon now. What’s your name?”
Later on, there was a few that criticized Scratch for what she did, because we is Animals, Higher Orders living under the Orders of Life, and we are bound to things and creatures of purpose, and nobody ever said anything about that including talking to Smelly Ones through the mind. It don’t seem natural, and if it was, Smelly Ones would’ve been able to make Thought Shapes long ago. But I don’t believe Scratch knew what she was on the edge of. Hell, none of us did, and I told her later I would have done the same thing.
What Scratch did next, she scrunched up her face, the hair on her back bristling, closed her eyes, and whispered her name. Real soft.
I braced myself.
Nothing happened.
Mr. P said, “What?”
Scratch opened her eyes. Seeing that she was all in one piece, she opened her mind to send a second Thought Picture with her name in it. Before she finished Blows Oil came through with a mind-stabber that felt like a hundred spears sticking in my eyes and everything went black for a minute.
When I come to, I seen Mr. P lying on his back outside Scratch’s cage holding his ears. He had got blowed off his feet and knocked clean over the railing. Howls were coming from all over the zoo, and through the pounding in my head and blurred vision I saw Scratch rolling around on the floor of her cage and I knew she was sorry then.
I tried sticking my head in the corner of my own cage for relief, my tail swinging high in the air, my rear end exposed, but it didn’t do no good. Blows More Oil had let her rage out full blast, just a-roaring.
Finally she finished, and when she did, Mr. P, who was on his back, sat up. The extra glass he wore was blown clean off his face. The fur on top of his head stood on end. He raised himself up from the ground slow, crawling around on all fours just like an Animal till he found them windows for his eyes. He put them on, got back on his hind legs, and shook his head clear.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “Is that a whale?”
Scratch didn’t say another blessed Thought Shape. She nodded.
Mr. P left.
I don’t know what passed between Mr. P and Blows More Oil that night. Rubs the gorilla later said Mr. P put on some funny skins to cover his bare Smelly One body and went right in the whale tank with Oil for a heart-to-heart. Then he went to Sniff, who started it all, and talked to him private one-on-one, in a way I suppose that only Smellies can.
Whatever went on between ’em I never knew, for Smellies got ways of
doing things that no Animal can quite understand. But the next day Mr. P came around and shouted to the entire zoo with big Thought Shapes that all of us could feel:
“From now on, no more Smelly in the Belly songs. So childish and cruel to treat one of your own that way. Have you got no pride? Are you Man? Or are you Higher Orders?”
Well, that sort of hit everyone where they lived, and we all agreed that we were Animals, Higher Orders all, descendants of the Highest Order of Things, and we apologized to Blows More Oil and she accepted it and we were all happy and excited, because we had ourselves the most interesting new friend we was to know for the rest of our days.
Chapter 2
Higher Orders
The nice thing about Mr. P wasn’t so much that he was a Smelly One who could Thought Speak, but that he thunk Animal thoughts. For example, the first thing he said to me when he came around to visit me the next night was, “How big is it?” That’s something no Smelly One would say right off. What he meant was how big my cage was.